A fun thing about how far down the rabbit hole the current iteration of Durham nonsense was -- "Alfa Bank" was mentioned on five (5) editions of Sean Hannity's program before this year. If it had been such a big part of the Trump-Russia mythos... wouldn't he have talked about it?
Like, here's the list of government officials Fox News hoped would be investigated/arrested/jailed under the "investigate the investigators" rubric. They got... a failed charge against a lawyer no one had ever heard of. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-n…
My brain is a wreckage of random right-wing catchphrases from various iterations of this nonsense. Obamagate, #ReleaseTheMemo, Uranium One, Operation Boomerang, and all the rest.
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1. A Fox host told Trump over lunch two weeks ago that Iran was days from a nuke, which he apparently believed over the denials of the former Fox contributor he made director of national intelligence.
2. Then Trump woke up on Friday and saw wall-to-wall positive coverage of Israeli strikes on Iran, and decided he wanted some credit.
3. Now the former Fox host Trump named Secretary of Defense has the U.S. military marshaling forces in the region while a different former Fox host has been in a scorched-earth fight with the first Fox host to capture Trump's attention and stop it.
1. I'm going to thread out the very odd sequence of events that led Fox News anchor John Robert, theoretically a "straight news" guy, to pretend the early hours of June 7 actually happened a day ago in order to avoid pointing out that Donald Trump was wrong about something.
2. A few hours ago at the White House, Trump was asked when he last spoke to CA Gov. Gavin Newsom. Trump replied that they had spoked "a day ago."
Pirro stands out, even among the long list of shills and propagandists Fox employs, as a diehard Trump sycophant. In 2018, my late colleague Simon Maloy wrote that her "advocacy for the president is so aggressive that it often borders on insane -- some of her commentary would be at home in an authoritarian state media apparatus." mediamatters.org/jeanine-pirro/…
Here's a thread of notes on Pete Hegseth, the Fox & Friends weekend co-host that Donald Trump is trying to make Defense Secretary, overseeing the U.S. military, massive Pentagon budget and bureaucracy, and sixth in line to the presidency.
Hegseth is an extreme hawk who has backed attacks on Iranian infrastructure and cultural sites and even floated a “preemptive strike” against North Korea. mediamatters.org/pete-hegseth/t…
Hegseth has complained that military rules of engagement in combat zones are “a huge problem” and were “written for us to lose.” He's backed that up by successfully lobbying Trump to give clemency to alleged and convicted U.S. war criminals. mediamatters.org/pete-hegseth/t…
Takeaway from the truck stunt is Trump won’t say anything bad about the supporter who spoke at his rally and called PR garbage, and indeed doesn’t seem able to even denounce the comment.
He’s just giving those influential Puerto Ricans who have been expressing outrage about the comments all week new material to post about, insane self-own.
Trumpy billionaires are hoping to ride a wave of grievance into power, then use it to cut their own taxes and demolish their competitors.
In exchange for his support, Trump is offering Elon Musk the power to, in Musk's own telling, destroy Tesla's domestic competitors.
The result would reverse the domestic manufacturing renaissance spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act, eliminating good jobs in Republican parts of the country.